The prior art includes various devices which may be used to record television programs. Most common may be VCRs, which can record television programs. More recently, devices known as personal video recorders (PVRs) have entered the market. PVRs use a hard drive to record digital data which may include, but is not limited to, a television program. Various optical media and other forms of memory may be used to record television programs or digital representations thereof.
The aforementioned television converter devices may be used to automatically record programs that will occur in the future. For VCRs, one may input the channel, time, and duration of a program to be recorded. This may be referred to as the manual setting of a timer. Newer PVR devices may allow a user to select a television program to be recorded from an electronic program guide (EPG). An EPG is a display of program and schedule information on the television screen. Such information may be broadcast to the television converter device, and may be periodically updated. Advanced EPGs may allow users to highlight particular programs. If selected, by pressing the proper button on a remote control, a highlighted program may be selected for either watching or recording depending on the situation.
Some advanced PVRs allow the user to set several different timers for several different programs. Another feature of some prior art PVRs is to announce conflicts between timers. The user may then resolve the conflict by effectively choosing one of the timers.
Prior art PVRs may announce a timer conflict by presenting the user with a text-based message that describes the timer conflict. The messages may include the titles of the programs, the time the programs were supposed to be recorded, and the channels. The user may need to read this information, determine why there is a conflict, and decide how to resolve the conflict. In essence, the text-based messages may force the user to decipher what caused the timer conflict.
Prior art devices do not provide for a graphical display of the conflict between the timers. Thus, prior art devices do not provide a user-friendly, graphical interface to resolve timer conflicts. These and other deficiencies of the prior art are overcome by the present invention.
For clarification, the drawings use a nomenclature for reference numerals that has two parts. The first part of the reference numeral is the drawing number, and it is followed by the second part, a two digit identifier (drawing 1 uses 1xx; drawing 3 uses 3xx). For example, two reference numerals in drawing 1 may be “102” and “104.” A reference numeral in one drawing may be referred to in subsequent drawings; the same reference numeral in later drawings refers to the same item.